At What Cost will Colombia Have Peace?

It’s difficult to understand from an outside perspective all the things going on in the world. Sure we can “pray for Paris” or feel bad for the people affected by the bombs in Brussels and the many other tragedies that go on in the world. But unless it affects us personally, it’s very hard for us to really think and reflect about the situations that hit home.

This particularly hits home for me with the recent protests in Colombia. Ones in which my family members, friends from school, and past neighbors have all been a part of. Many people have never known peace since guerilla groups have been around from the end of the 1940’s. Whenever i’m in Colombia I can see how desperate people are for peace amongst the country but they are worried about the costs. President Santos and the government have been negotiating for a few years now with the FARC for them to become part of society but a lot of people question whether they will really be brought to justice for the crimes they committed.

It’s difficult for many Colombians to accept that people who devoted their lives to killing and kidnapping others could one day potentially live on the same floor as their apartment, run for congress, or even just live ordinary lives. It leads me to believe that the president’s intentions aren’t so much towards peace but more so of appearing like a superhero to a situation that’s more complicated than it seems. Ending the internal war with the guerilla groups has been the goal of every president since the beginning. It seems to me that Santos has become somewhat obsessed with the peace agreement and has forgotten about the other things that are important to the country like the economy, health care, human rights, and many of the other things he talked about.

I’m about to have a new baby cousin that will be born around June in Colombia. I want them to live and grow up in a country without car bombs, kidnapping, and so much violence in the streets. But I also hope that when they learn about what happened in the period that peace wasn’t achieved just for the sake of it but that their was justice for all the people who had been wronged.

Other countries like South Africa and El Salvador had to reach a similar balance between achieving peace and providing perfect justice where conflict and abuses had gone on for so long. It wasn’t easy but each society has to find their own balance. Colombians aren’t protesting against peace in fact that’s what most of them want but they are protesting against the unfairness of the way peace is trying to be achieved.